Bullying...

In a way bullying is like a river. It just keeps going and going and no one knows where it starts. They just watch from a spot on that river and wonder what they would do if they found it. Just like bullying, everyone watches it happen, but not a lot of people are willing to stand up for the person or look for a solution to stop it.

From early on in my sister’s life, we knew we would have to deal with some sort of bullying. She was an average girl except for one thing:she was short, very short. She was born early so she wasn’t fully developed when she was born and for that reason, she is short. I’m currently 5’7”. When I stand next to her, the top of her head is at the bottom of my chest. That makes her about 4’11” at 15 years old.

Ever since grade school, she has been short compared to her classmates. And they always made fun of her for it. They called her an elf, a stub, and short stuff. From then on, the names got worse and more frequent. Eventually, bullies started pushing her around and bumping into her saying, “Oh, I found small fry!” and much worse things I can’t say in this story. She would come home looking so lost and confused about why it had to be her and why she had to be the way she is.

It seemed as time went on, she spent more time in her room alone. She said she was doing homework but we (me and my parents) knew she was sitting in there and crying. We tried to get her to talk about it, but she would just get annoyed and angry and storm off to her room. It was obvious she was being affected by the bullying more than we ever could have imagined.

We knew who the worst bully was her at school. My parents tried to get him punished for his actions, but it seemed like the school didn’t even care. Eventually, the school called in his parents and talked to them about what he was doing. Like most parents, they were in denial: “Our son would never do that. He’s been raised better than that. NO! Not our son.”

After multiple times of having the parents talk to the principal and nothing changed, we were just at a loss of what to do next.

We tried everything to try to get this to stop, but it wouldn’t. So we just waited it out until she graduated from middle school. And thankfully, things did change when she got to high school. We found out that the same kid that bullied my sister in grade school and middle school was now being bullied himself in high school. In a way we were almost glad. I know that sounds bad but how would you feel if your sister and daughter was being bullied for the past eight years then have that same kid get bullied. It was like him getting a BIG taste of his own medicine. He never bothered my sister again I think because he now understands what he was doing to her and realizes it was wrong.
My sister is now a sophomore in high school. She has too many friends to count and not one problem with bullying. As of right now, I think she has found the beginning of that river and is happier than ever he is not along on the ride with her.